Rule 4: Always use Open Protective Stops (OPS)

An Open Protective Stop (OPS) is an open order to exit a long or short position should prices move against you to a specified price. OPS's act as insurance against an unusually large loss, though the actual fill price may be less favorable where fast moving markets squeeze liquidity or when, in futures, limit moves cease market trading before the OPS is executed.

Before you enter any order, always determine the maximum risk you want to take. I call this Theoretical Risk. Theoretical risk is the distance between your entry price and your OPS. As shown in Figure 1, if you get into a stock at 10 and place an OPS at 8, your theoretical risk is (10-8) = 2 points. Winning traders know it's important to not only use OPS's but also, position them so that the theoretical risk is kept at 2 percent of capital or less. For example, if you have a $1,000,000 account, you should only risk $20,000 per trade in a theoretical risk.

Rule 3: Understanding the Markets is Much More Important Than Methodology

Many traders are fixated on finding the Holy Grail, that is, a mechanical trading system or methodology which generates large and consistent profits with no discretionary judgment on the part of the trader.

Most traders who read this will deny they are looking for the Holy Grail, stating that they'd be happy with a mechanical system offering only a 60% win to loss ratio as opposed to the 80% to 90% that is claimed in many ads--as long as the system makes them a millionaire within a year to two.

I would, without hesitation, say that anybody in search of an enduringly profitable trading system that makes all your trading decisions for you is in search of the Holy Grail. In other words, such a money making machine simply does not exist.

But wait, you may say--"aren't all the highly successful traders in the world using some kind of unique methodology or system? Why can't I simply use the same exact approach they are and become just as successful?"

The answer is this: The markets are always changing. All trading strategies go through seasons of winning and losing. The key to long-term success is to understand the markets well enough so that you know how to adjust or switch strategies or even develop new ones in response to changing market conditions. Focus on systems and you may make money for awhile, but eventually you'll give it all back (and more). Focus on true understanding and you will be well on the way to consistent trading success.

What "Understanding" Is

You may wonder what I mean by "understanding." "Understanding" is the pot of gold that comes through your skills as a trader and on your ability to consistently find ways to limit your risks while participating in opportunities that have much more reward than the risk you are taking. It is the ability to see a strategy as nothing more than a tool and see when it's applicable and when it's not.

In short, the pot of gold does not lie in some system outside of yourself; it lies in the set of skills and degree of understanding and insight that you build within.

A True Story to Illustrate My Point

The Master Trader strives for understanding. The Novice Trader searches in vain for magical systems.

In closing this section, let me share a true story with you that will graphically illustrate my point:

In the mid-eighties, I met two traders who had attended a seminar by a very well known and reputable trader. These two traders did not know each other, but coincidentally, they both learned and applied the same system.

The first trader was the Novice Trader.

He began to trade the system in 1986 and was shocked at how much money he made. He was anxious to commit more capital to it, but wanted my opinion first. I back-tested the system and found that it had an identical performance to what was claimed in the seminar. However, I explained to this trader that I had three serious reservations. First, there was no stop-loss protection. Secondly, even though the system showed phenomenal gains in its four years of testing, that was not a sufficient time frame in which to evaluate the system properly. Third, the system was tested during a bull market. I didn't think it would perform well during a bear market.

To address these concerns, I suggested that the trader employ stop-losses and trend filters. This would have cut the total hypothetical profits during the four year testing period and hence, likely reduce future profits. The trader, however, did not heed my advice and left my office intending to continue trading the system "as is."

This trader's confidence in the system continued to build over the next several months as he made a fortune by racking up steady and consistent profits month after month. On October 17, 1987, the day of the great market crash, this trader was completely wiped out.

A few months later after the crash, I was talking to another trader. This trader was one I'd call a

Master Trader.

I found out that he had attended the same seminar spoken about above and that he had been exploiting the same strategy as the Novice Trader, but in contrast, he'd been successful using it, despite the 1987 crash.

I noticed that this trader had not taken the system's signals on October 27, nor during the entire October-November 1987 period. He explained to me anyone with a true understanding of the markets would not be applying the system during that period. He thought the system was good at identifying opportunities, but he'd only exploit them if he could limit risk with a stop-loss and in an upward trending market. That was not the case during that period.

The Novice Trader focused on the "system" and not "understanding the markets." In so

doing, he assumed that the system was infallible and he was not able to anticipate the market environment that would usher in the system's inevitable season of loss. The Novice Trader wanted to find a fishing hole where the fish were always biting.

The Master Trader was simply looking for ideas that help him increase his understanding.

He didn't consider what he learned at the seminar to be a "system", but rather, it was knowledge that he could use to find more low-risk, high reward opportunities. There was no way he would use it without fully understanding it so that he'd know the conditions under which it applied best and when it might not apply. The Master Trader was looking for another way to find a fishing hole where the fish might be biting for a while.

Winning traders seek to understand the markets and not to find magical systems.

Now let's move on to my more general money management rules.

Rule 2: Consistency is the Key

For most individual traders and investors, the single most important criteria for judging the performance of a trading methodology is total return. Consequently, when you look at ads selling trading systems and methodologies, you see a lot of wild claims of 80%, 100%, or even 300% average annual rate of return.

It's ironic that in talking to the vast majority of traders who've made their millions through trading, total return is the very last number they look at when judging the viability of a trading strategy. What matters more to this elite class of trader is risk, maximum draw-down, the duration of draw­downs, volatility, and a wide assortment of other risk-oriented benchmarks. Only when all their risk criteria is met do they consider total return.

The typical trader might wonder if these traders are just overly cautious and conservative. But that is simply not the case. As a whole, they are just as fanatical about the accumulation of wealth and financial freedom as anyone else who trades.

What has caused these traders to shift their focus to this winning strategy is that they've worked through the numbers. Doing so, they find:

• Total return is only a valid measure of performance when risk is taken into consideration.

I credit my success as a money manager to my voracious study and practice of this concept. Let me show you a simple example that you may find surprising. Even though I use investment funds in my example, this concept I'm illustrating is directly applicable to all traders no matter how short-term their orientation is:

1. Over the past 30 years, investment Fund A has returned 12 percent annually on average, has a strategy that is not dependent on any particular market doing well, and has had a 5 percent worst-case historical drawdown.
2. Over the past 30 years, investment Fund B has returned 17 percent annually on average, has had performance highly correlated with U.S. stock indexes, and has had a 15 percent worst-cast historical drawdown (both investments are vastly superior to the S & P).

Which fund would you invest in?

Most traders and investors would be most attracted to Fund B, which showed greater total returns over the 30 year period. In justifying this they'd say: "I have no problem accepting a worst-case 15 percent hit because I'll come out ahead in the end. The extra protection in the Fund A doesn't help me that much.

Now--check this out. Most professional traders who understand the math would select Fund A. With the lower maximum drawdown, they would simply concentrate more fire power in Fund A by buying it on margin (putting 50 percent down). Doing this they were earn a 19 percent annual return after margin costs and sustain only a 10 percent expected drawdown risk, compared with a 17 percent return on Fund B with a 15 percent expected risk.

But there's even more to it.

The Smoke and Mirrors Behind Average Annual Returns

Whenever any trader, trading system vendor, or money manager brags about their performance in terms of Annual Average Return, they are--whether or not they know it--engaging in smoke and mirrors.

What is concealed in this statistic is the harm that is wreaked upon capital growth by drawdowns and losing streaks. In Rule #1, "Minimize Losses," we talked about how the difficulty of making up for a large trading loss is seemingly disproportionate to the magnitude of the error that caused the loss in the first place. That factors greatly into how much money you wind up making.

The real truth behind how much money you make is to be found in "Compounded Annual Return." That is, calculate your annual return by adding every gain and subtracting every loss that occurs during the course of a year. This is illustrated in the following table:

Let's consider the following table:

Year

Volatile Returns Annual Returns(%)

Principal

Dependable Gains Annual

Principal

			Return (%)
1	21	1,210,000	18	1,180,000
2	35	1,6333,500	18	1,392,400
3	20	1,960,200	18	1,643,030
4	-26	1,450,500	18	1,938,780
5	32	1,914,720	18	2,287,760
6	12	1,347,450	18	2,699,560
7	42	3,045,170	18	3,185,480
8	-16	2,557,950	18	3,750,887
9	31	3,350,910	18	4,435,460
10	56	5,233,000	18	5,233,850

Average Annual Return = 20.7% Average Annual Return = 18%

Compound Annual Return = 17.98% Compound Annual Rate = 18%

As you can see, the fund that makes a steady 18% per year actually makes you more money than the one that posts spectacular gains eight out of ten years. The damage caused by the two losing years is quite evident.

Again, this example is applicable whether you are a day trader or a long-term investor.

The vast majority of trading strategies that boast spectacular gains, also take great risks. This means greater drawdowns and more volatile performance. To be successful as a trader, you must ignore the flashy statistics and work through the numbers. Evaluate your strategy by calculating on paper where your total trading equity would hypothetically be for every trade over a period of several years.

You will find that it is far, far better to use strategies that earn steady and consistent returns year after year after year. You will inevitably find that the annual returns of these strategies are far less spectacular than those that are widely advertised, but the math makes it clear that you are far more likely to be laughing your way to the bank this way.

Oh yes, you'll sleep better at night now. For successful traders, consistency is the key.

Money Management: The Real Holy Grail

Money Management: The Real Holy Grail

Fellow Traders:

A key component to successful trading is proper money management.

Traders, in general, spend far too much time and effort trying to find magical systems or methodologies that produce high returns, rather than increasing their understanding of the markets and using astute money management to apply what they learn.

I agree with Stanley Kroll who once said:

"It is better to have a mediocre system and good money management than an excellent system and poor money management."

In this first week of our 10-week course, I'm going to teach you everything I've learned about the discipline of money management in the past 17 years of trading and fund management. You'll not only review some familiar rules, but also learn about some powerful principles that go way beyond just cutting your losses short and letting your profits run. Even though these principles can make you a lot of money, I doubt that you'll hear very many fund managers or system vendors talking about them in their ads because they know that the public is drawn toward glitzy performance numbers--not risk control.

But, if you want to know the real truth about what it takes to be a successful trader, be assured that I won’t pull any punches.

Now let's get started. The first three rules are what I consider to be the most important. Without them, everything falls apart. I consider them to be the very foundation my success as a trader.

The first one is:

Rule 1: Minimize Losses!

As simple as it sounds, failure to keep losses small is the #1 reason why most traders blow out early in the game. That almost happened to me, in fact.

When I first started trading, I bought call options on gold stocks right before the big explosion in Gold prices in 1979. In less than a year I made 500% on my money. I thought I knew everything. But then my real education started.

In 1981, I got caught short Orange Juice during a series of limit-up moves that lasted more than a week. By the time I exited, I had lost nearly half of my account. It was at this point that I realized the importance of limiting my losses.

Very few traders understand the mathematics of losses and risk. But I believe that just understanding the following concept can turn a losing trader into a winning one because it can help you to focus on doing the right things and turn you away from the wrong things.

Here is the concept that I strongly suggest you chew on for awhile:

• When you lose money in trading, you wind up having less capital to work with. Therefore, to make back what you lost you have to earn a substantially higher percentage return than what you lost.

Example: If you make a series of bad trades and your account drops 70% in value, you will not get back to your break-even point until you have made over 230% on your remaining money!

That doesn't sound fair does it? You'd think that if your account dropped 70%, you'd be at the break-even point again when you've made 70%. Sorry, but this is not reality. A trader who loses 20% or more must show a return of 30% to make up for the loss. It can take a year or more for even the best traders I know to produce such a return.

This is one of the principles that keeps many losing traders from digging themselves out of the hole they've dug for themselves. They lose a big chunk of money and, even if their skill improves, they are not able to recover unless they add more money to their trading account--usually from their hard-earned paychecks or credit cards.

As I studied the qualities of successful traders, the concept of weighing risk and reward hit home. Trading performance meant more to me than just shooting for big gains; it meant looking closely at the risks I was willing to take to make those gains.

Indeed, as I studied the qualities that the most successful traders have in common, I noticed that most strived to keep their draw-downs to around 20% to 30% or less.

When you trade, you always have to be conscious of the dangers of suffering big losses. You not only lose the money, but you also have the potential to be knocked out of the game permanently. Realizing this will produce a fear in you that I assure you will be quite healthy. That fear will help you to remember to keep your position sizes small and to apply trailing stops religiously.

Winning traders minimize losses.